


Somewhere to Stand

by emrisemrisemris



Series: On Other Fields [1]
Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: Blowjobs, Hair Pulling, Hearts of War, M/M, Missing Scene, Outdoor Sex, armour is sexy, fighting as flirting, rough-ish fucking, some D/s, taking that line about orders and running with it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-29
Updated: 2019-12-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:47:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22019611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emrisemrisemris/pseuds/emrisemrisemris
Summary: "Are you willing to take orders from Spartans, Alexios?""On the battlefield I'll take orders from anyone who's willing to pay me. In private -" Alexios dropped his reinforced warskirt on the heap of armour plates and spared a glance around them, in case anyone else had chosen this evening to come up to the ruins, but there was nobody "- I also have no particular allegiance." He shrugged, watching Thaletas' flush deepen. "I aim to please."
Relationships: Alexios/Thaletas (Assassin's Creed)
Series: On Other Fields [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1600291
Comments: 3
Kudos: 126





	Somewhere to Stand

At the top of the path, the dusty track opened abruptly out onto a courtyard surrounded by ruined pillars and crumbled walls, their carved and painted ornamentation weathered by centuries open to the sky.

"This is where I come to train," Thaletas said, gazing around the empty expanse with obvious affection. "I found it after arriving on Delos. Exhausting my body clears my mind."

Flowers, yellow and purple, grew in the gaps between the stones. Insects buzzed. Out of the corner of his eye Alexios caught sight of Ikaros wheeling overhead, plainly exulting in the sun. 

"This place is beautiful, Thaletas." Alexios said. He couldn't help but add "As are you."

"You've won my heart, Alexios." Thaletas said it as though it was a settled fact, and not something that made Alexios' own heart stumble in his chest. "But to claim it, I need to see what you're really made of. Fight me."

Still reeling from the previous sentence, it took a moment for Alexios to parse what he had said. " _What?_ "

"You claimed to be Spartan when we met. I want," Thaletas said, as if nothing could be more obvious or reasonable, "to see if you fight like one."

His first sight of Thaletas had been in the chaos of the fight on the beach, a dark, shifting battleground lit only by fire. The first thing the man had ever said to him had been a compliment on his swordplay. What was he playing at? "You've seen me fight.”

"Against Athenians, yes," Thaletas said. The ghost of a smile played around his mouth.

"Well?"

"The only way to truly know someone is through combat." Thaletas drew his sword, unhurriedly, almost contemplatively, and weighed it in his hand as he stepped away from Alexios. "Hand to hand, flesh to flesh, bone to bone."

A bird called in a tree somewhere nearby as the two men looked at one another.

"Fine," Alexios said at last. "Just don't get angry when I break that pretty face of yours."

Thaletas narrowed his eyes at the challenge, but said nothing. Alexios unslung his spare weapons, leaning first his staff and then his bow and quiver against the pale stone. He turned back to Thaletas with his sword in one hand and the spear of Leonidas in the other. For a moment the sun gleamed strangely off the edge of the spearhead, as if it had its own light. 

Thaletas saluted Alexios ironically with his sword, stepped back into a defensive stance and was suddenly, between one breath and the next, every inch the Spartan commander. 

Alexios nodded in return, feinted with the spear, and closed straight in. 

He realised after about thirty bruising seconds, dodging one hair-raising blow and turning another off his wristguard, that he'd badly underestimated Thaletas. And it was a _good_ realisation, making him look anew at the man and wonder what other hidden depths he'd missed - no, not missed: had yet to discover.

Thaletas fought like a Spartan, which was to say with a kind of brutal precision, moving from attack to attack with the ease and speed that spoke of long, long training. There were patterns in it Alexios recognised: his father had started teaching him the very simplest drills even when he'd barely been able to hold a wooden sword. No step or movement should be wasted: every thrust and swing should be placed so that even if it missed its target it lined up for the next attempt, and on, and on.

Alexios' work tended to bring him up against bandits or footsoldiers, who had little to choose between them when times were hard: poorly trained, badly disciplined and seldom well equipped. For dealing with more formidable opponents there were always avenues of escape, or a high point to retreat to and unsling his bow. In straight-up single combat, with the unspoken agreement not to bring out any of his collection of assassin's tricks, he was slipping, and Thaletas was exploiting every misstep and uncertainty. 

Every blow turned aside sent a shudder up his wrists; every swing caught on his armour would leave a bruise underneath it. Tomorrow would hurt. But how long had it even been since a single opponent had pushed him to his limit like this? How long since he'd fought someone who made him work for it? 

Flesh on flesh. Bone on bone. Alexios had been going to make a dirty crack about the Spartan's choice of words, until he'd parsed the utter sincerity in Thaletas' eyes. Some things you didn't mock. 

Back and forth across the dusty courtyard of the ruin, the flash and clatter of blades stitching a bright thread through the golden stillness of the evening. Gradually Alexios ground out an advantage, a step here, a feint there, until Thaletas was firmly in retreat. At last the Spartan brought his sword around for what should have been a decisive hit, and Alexios caught the downrushing blade in the X of his crossed weapons. Unearthly yellow sparks fountained off the edge of the spear. Thaletas had to step clumsily backwards to avoid his own momentum pulling him over, and for a moment left himself open.

Alexios kicked him, and the Spartan went down into the dust in a clatter of armour. He got his arms down to break the fall, but only by dropping the sword, which landed just a fraction too far away.

Alexios stepped up to where he'd fallen, and with exaggerated flair put the point of the spear a couple of inches from his breastbone.

Thaletas shook his head, opening his hands. _I yield._ Alexios returned the spear to its sheath and moved back, to give him room to sit up. 

The sun was just touching the far horizon, casting everything in deep rich shades of gold and bronze. It glowed off the fittings of Thaletas' armour and the sword Alexios had sent spinning from his hand. The Spartan was a mess: dishevelled, dusty, sweating, with his neat braid slipping and bruises already starting to bloom on his upper arms. But his eyes were dancing, and the exhilaration radiating off him was so plain as almost to glow as well.

Thaletas half sat up, groaned, and sank back to one elbow as Alexios bent double, hands braced on his own thighs, to catch his breath. "You don't fight like a Spartan," the soldier said, after a long minute where neither man had done anything but breathe deeply. "You fight like a god."

"You're not so bad yourself," Alexios said with heartfelt force. Every part of him ached.

Thaletas looked up at him, and said "Are you going to just stand there, or are you going to finish me off?"

He was smiling. Alexios gave him a hand back to his feet, and hesitated, unwilling to let go. 

Thaletas kissed him: stepped up and pulled him in, hands still clasped tightly between them. It felt like a long drink after a bruising ride, like climbing out of a cave into sunlight.

"You talked about orders. _Bruised, bloody, or broken, never hold back._ " Alexios said, and started to strip off his armour. Thaletas flushed as he repeated the words. "Is that what you want?"

"It's what I prefer," Thaletas said simply, though there was still a little too much colour in his face. "Are you willing to take orders from Spartans, Alexios?"

"On the battlefield I'll take orders from anyone who's willing to pay me. In private -" Alexios dropped his reinforced warskirt on the heap of armour plates and spared a glance around them, in case anyone else had chosen this evening to come up to the ruins, but there was nobody "- I also have no particular allegiance." He shrugged, watching Thaletas' flush deepen. "I aim to please."

"I've seen you aim. I've never seen you miss." Thaletas' tone was light, but he reached out to touch Alexios' face with what looked almost like reverence, trailing his fingers along the line of his jaw. "I ... thought it might be too much to ask."

He looked to be maintaining his composure through iron will alone, if the tension in his hand was any indication.

Alexios covered Thaletas' hand with his own, and said "I'm willing to do a lot of things. Sometimes people give me trouble about that. They don't usually do it twice."

He stepped inside Thaletas' reach, catching him around the waist, and kissed him again; slower and more purposefully than before, lingering. Thaletas' hands came up to cup the back of his head, fingers meshing in his braids, holding them close together. The Spartan kissed him with hungry urgency, as if making up for lost time.

After some sunlit interval that he couldn't easily have measured or described, they came apart. With Thaletas still holding his head, Alexios said softly "What are your orders, _polemarchos_?"

"Help me disarm," Thaletas said, voice shaking only a little. He took a few steps back, and spread his arms. In that inconsequential movement he seemed to get hold of himself again, and was every inch the commander: quiet, unfussy, but freighted with the absolute certainty that he would be obeyed.

He would be a great general one day, Alexios thought; he had the presence for it, the instinct to lead. Combat skills could be trained, tactics and strategies learned, but the gift of charisma was rare, and Thaletas wore it like laurels. 

He moved to Thaletas' side, unhooking the scarlet cloak and laying it carefully over the broken wall. He ducked his head to free the laces at one side of the cuirass, then the other, and then at the right shoulder to make room to lift it away. 

It was all mundane, finicky work, the kind of thing he had done a thousand times for friends on Kephallonia, for his crew, even for strangers on the road, without any real thought. Buckles rusted and laces caught and sometimes it was easier with another pair of hands. Now, working at the fastenings of Thaletas' armour, he was intensely aware of every time his fingers brushed clothed skin; intensely conscious of the proximity and the heat of Thaletas' body, the scents of leather and sweat and metal. 

He put the cuirass aside, and moved to undo Thaletas' bracers. He had never looked, never had a chance to look, at Thaletas' hands. Now he took in the details: the soldier's calluses, a narrow scar over the thumb, new bruises starting from their duel.

He wanted to kiss the soft inside of Thaletas' wrist, and work his way up the blue vein to the inviting swell of biceps and shoulder. It'd come with the salt taste of Thaletas' sweat, the tang of combat. His prick stirred at the thought. But he had his orders, and oh, he'd forgotten how good it was to submit to a man who knew how to command it. 

He put the bracer and arm-wrap down, and settled for stealing one brief kiss, over the taut tendon of Thaletas' wrist, before moving with silent obedience to the other side.

Thaletas watched him with the serene patience of someone who knew exactly what he was doing, and was enjoying it.

He went down to one knee to undo Thaletas' greaves, resting his head against the polemarch's thigh as he worked. Thaletas' hand settled in his hair, fingers meshing in amongst his braids, and did not pull but most definitely held. The soft, firm not-yet-pressure was enough to send another rush of blood to his cock. 

With the greaves laid aside, Alexios reached up, Thaletas' hand still firm in his hair, to undo the buckle of the swordbelt and the studded warskirt that hung from it. It was cinched tight over Thaletas' narrow hips, and undoing it required attention and both hands pressed close. He could feel the swell of Thaletas' cock under the strips of the warskirt, and it was everything he could do not to reach for it.

The buckle came loose, and Alexios unpeeled the heavy skirt and let it drop.

"Your mouth," Thaletas said softly. 

He moved aside the folds of his tunic with his free hand, and fumbled his prick free of the breechclout underneath. Alexios liked the look of it on sight: not ungainly-large, but arrestingly thick and with the first hint of fluid glistening at the tip.

He took it obediently in his mouth, sliding his lips over the heavy head and down the shaft, and Thaletas groaned. He tasted of salt: sweat, and the faint astringent taste of cum. Alexios explored the contours with lips and tongue, working first tentatively, then with more urgency as Thaletas' fingers tightened in his hair. 

He felt Thaletas' cock harden further under his lips, becoming harder to hold in his mouth even as the Spartan pulled his head further in. Alexios wondered for a moment if the Spartan was going to fuck his mouth with real force, and his cock twitched at the thought.

No; evidently not. Thaletas let go of his head and stepped backwards, cock still erect under the folds of his tunic. "Stand up."

Alexios stood.

"Take off your tunic," Thaletas said, and took hold of his cock, stroking himself carefully. His eyes did not leave Alexios. "And let down your hair."

Very deliberately, Alexios freed the knot that held back his braids, letting them fall around his shoulders. That done, he reached up and undid the shoulder pins of his tunic, letting it fall down over his belt. The air was cool on his bare chest, and Thaletas audibly caught his breath at the sight.

The Spartan reached out, running his fingernails down Alexios' chest, through the fuzz of dark hair. "Every time I think I can't want you any more I'm proved wrong."

"You have me," Alexios said, and kissed him.

When they left off this time, Thaletas said "I want to fuck you. Find somewhere to stand."

He went to find something in his abandoned belt pouch. Alexios turned and braced himself leaning forward over the ruined wall, with Thaletas' cloak between his belly and the stone. The view fell away in front of him, the steep flowered hillside with its rocky bones dropping down to the sea, and the sun sinking below the horizon in a welter of gold and copper.

Thaletas embraced him from behind, warm and solid, and for a moment they stood still doing nothing else. Some inner part of Alexios marvelled at the strangeness of it all, the impossibility that his bloody, bitter vendetta against the Cult could have brought him here, to so much beauty, and to the arms of a Spartan.

The moment lingered and died away, not sharply but softly, like a lyre-string falling silent. Thaletas held him tight for a moment, and then said with uncharacteristic hesitancy "Alexios. Do you still want -"

Alexios half turned his head, feeling Thaletas' breath on his cheek, and said "More than anything."

Thaletas drew a sharp breath, the sound of a man clinging to his self-control as if to a cliff face, and briefly buried his head in Alexios' shoulder.

After a moment, he murmured "You come when I tell you to. Not before."

"Sir," Alexios said, and was rewarded with another inarticulate noise. 

Thaletas pulled aside his tunic and breechclout, and ran one fingernail down his lower spine in a flare of sensation that made Alexios hiss through his teeth. He heard the sound of a bottle being opened, and then the cool familiarity of oil stroked over his opening. Thaletas slid a finger into him, working the oil into his hole with practised ease; then two fingers, testing and teasing him. When Alexios was slick and sensitive Thaletas withdrew, and a moment later there was the blunt, hot pressure of his prick.

Alexios breathed out, closed his eyes, and let Thaletas take him in one long thrust.

His cock was everything Alexios had hoped for, or more, a deep white-hot pressure that opened and filled him. An edge of pain, yes, but also a rightness, the physical rhyme of a sword in a scabbard. There was a sheer joy in the act of fitting together that he hadn't realised he had missed so deeply until he felt it again. 

After the first few uncertain movements Thaletas seemed to find his angle, and also found the strange sweet spot that sent dizzy sparks up Alexios' spine with every thrust. He'd already been hard when Thaletas entered him, stiff with need, and at this rate he wasn't going to last much longer. Thaletas had ordered him not to climax, and of course the very fact of the order was making him harder, tipping him closer to the edge -

As if he'd heard, Thaletas let go of his hip with his left hand and shoved his fingers back into Alexios' hair, and tightened his grip hard. "What did I tell you?"

No answer seemed needed or expected. Alexios pulled back against him, enjoying Thaletas' strength as much as he did the pain, and grateful for something to focus on that wasn't, briefly, the agonising hardness of his cock or how close he was to coming. 

Thaletas let go and took hold of his hip again, and set a bruising rhythm that reminded Alexios of nothing so much as the way he had fought: no movement wasted, every thrust hitting its dizzying mark, and which neither faltered nor paused.

He could feel orgasm coming up towards him like a wave, a flood of sensations that could not be disentangled from one another: Thaletas' fingers tight on his hips, Thaletas' weight shuddering against his back, Thaletas' cock stretching him a fraction wider as the Spartan came inside him.

Alexios held on grimly through the last pulses of Thaletas' climax, and then could hold on no longer, orders or no orders. He came almost painfully, cock jerking helplessly in air as he spilled himself into the dust.

He sank forward over the stone, and rested his head on his arms as he waited for his heart to slow. Everything hurt, but he felt light, as if Thaletas had hollowed and emptied him. 

The Spartan held him for a few moments, hair damp against his cheek, as they softened together. Finally, Thaletas stepped reluctantly away. 

Alexios levered himself upright, picked through his discarded equipment, found his water bottle and a rag, and cleaned himself up, wincing as his bruises made themselves known. Thaletas did the same, and began strapping his armour back on.

"Need a hand?" Alexios said.

"I'm not sure I could stand another round of your help," Thaletas said ruefully, and groaned as something clicked in his shoulders. "Hades, I'm stiff."

"Already?" Alexios said with a sidelong look. "Impressive."

Thaletas laughed, and sat down heavily on the top of the wall. For a few long seconds he stared into the middle distance, as if trying to remember something, and shook his head. "You amaze me."

Alexios glanced up from fastening his sword belt. "How so?"

"For the first time since I was a boy, I forgot about war." Thaletas looked down at himself, armoured and armed, and shook his head. He seemed about to say something more, but thought otherwise of it, and stayed silent.

"Glad I could help," Alexios said, and cursed himself for how banal it sounded.

"What about you?" Thaletas said curiously. "Are there things you'd like to forget?"

For a moment Alexios wanted to spill the whole sorry saga from the start: just bluntly say _When I was nine years old my father threw me off a cliff_ and wait to see how long Thaletas lasted before he ran. It was a bitter, unnecessary impulse and he shoved it down, settling for a shrug and "There is much of my past I wish I could forget."

Thaletas said only "I'd love to hear about it."

"And I'd love to tell you." Alexios heard himself say the words as if they'd come from someone else, and wondered at them. "But we have a war to fight."

"When this war is won, then," Thaletas said with a grin, "we'll drink and share our deep, dark secrets."

He stood up, stretching.

"I'd like that," Alexios said, and Thaletas kissed him again, with a tenderness he hadn't expected and which was almost too much to bear. 

He'd lusted after Thaletas almost the moment they met; had daydreamed idly of a fling with the pretty, hot-tempered Spartan to liven up another bloody, grinding campaign. He hadn't expected ... whatever this was, the open awe in Thaletas' eyes and the way that kissing him felt like a benediction. 

Over the ocean, the sun went down.

*

**Two days later**

Alexios had honed his weapons and blackened his armour with soot in preparation for night work. He knew the layout of Podarkes' villa, and the patrol schedule of his increasingly harried guards. He'd told both Kyra and Thaletas that it was to be tonight, and they should be ready. The Spartan reinforcements had turned up the previous night, sliding silently through the ragged blockade: Thaletas' makeshift camp now bustled with purpose.

Thaletas had kissed him for good luck, just briefly while none of his senior officers were looking, and said "Come back alive." A half-smile. "That's an order."

So he went, slipping along the darkened roads to commit a murder, Thaletas' words refusing to leave him.

He made one stop before going to the governor's house. The temple of Aphrodite in Mykonos was scarcely worth the name, a small shrine quite literally in the long shadow of the sanctuary of Artemis Agrotera. Nevertheless, as at all temples of the goddess of love and fertility, the space for offerings overflowed: fruit, flowers, trinkets, incense.

Alexios had had little enough time for the gods for years, and little patience for claims of miracles. He'd had less still since seeing the Pythia of Delphi sobbing as she talked about the Cult buying her prophecies. But something in his chest hurt, the flowering of something sharp and fragile and unlooked-for, and something that was half fear and half hope made him pray again.

 _Let this not end in blood._ It didn't seem too much to ask, and yet. 

Alexios left the handful of Thaletas' flower petals in the pile before the altar, now sun-withered into little papery scented wisps, and sought out the woman tending the sacred flame to hand over his other offering. 

"A substantial gift, _misthios,_ " said the sharp-eyed priestess, once she'd counted through the coins and bitten one to check it was real. "What do you seek from Aphrodite that is worth so much?"

"I wasn't looking for anything," Alexios said, and turned to look at the impassive face of the statue over the altar. She looked back at him, painted eyes blank, though She was sculpted smiling. "But I was given it anyway, and I would not like to be in Her debt."

"Then you are both blessed and wise," said the priestess dryly. "May you have every drop of joy from it you can."


End file.
